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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Effect of Racism on the Oppressed

Wright’s exploration of Bigger’s psychological corruption gives us a new perspective on the oppressive effect racism had on the Black population in 1930s America. Bigger’s psychological damage results from the constant barrage of racist propaganda and racial oppression he faces while growing up. The movies he sees depict whites as wealthy sophisticates and Black people as jungle savages. He and his family live in cramped and squalid conditions, enduring socially enforced poverty and having little opportunity for education. Bigger’s resulting attitude toward whites is a volatile combination of powerful anger and powerful fear. He conceives of “whiteness” as an overpowering and hostile force that is set against him in life. Just as whites fail to conceive of Bigger as an individual, he does not really distinguish between individual whites—to him, they are all the same, frightening and untrustworthy. As a result of his hatred and fear, Bigger’s accidental killing of Mary Dalton does not fill him with guilt. Instead, he feels an odd jubilation because, for the first time, he has asserted his own individuality against the white forces that have conspired to destroy it.

Throughout the novel, Wright illustrates the ways in which white racism forces Black people into a pressured—and therefore dangerous—state of mind. Black people are beset with the hardship of economic oppression and forced to act subserviently before their oppressors, while the media consistently portrays them as animalistic brutes. Given such conditions, as Max argues, it becomes inevitable that Black people such as Bigger will react with violence and hatred. However, Wright emphasizes the vicious double-edged effect of racism: though Bigger’s violence stems from racial hatred, it only increases the racism in American society, as it confirms racist whites’ basic fears about Black people. In Wright’s portrayal, whites effectively transform Black people into their own negative stereotypes of “blackness.” Only when Bigger meets Max and begins to perceive whites as individuals does Wright offer any hope for a means of breaking this circle of racism. Only when sympathetic understanding exists between Black people and whites will they be able to perceive each other as individuals, not merely as stereotypes.

The Effect of Racism on the Oppressor

The deleterious effect of racism extends to the white population, in that it prevents whites from realizing the true humanity inherent in groups that they oppress. Indeed, one of the great strengths of Native Son as a chronicle of the effects of oppression is Wright’s extraordinary ability to explore the psychology not only of the oppressed but of the oppressors as well. Wright illustrates that racism is destructive to both groups, though for very different reasons. Many whites in the novel, such as Britten and Peggy, fall victim to the obvious pitfall of racism among whites: the unthinking sense of superiority that deceives them into seeing Black people as less than human. Wright shows that this sense of superiority is a weakness, as Bigger is able to manipulate it in his cover-up of Mary’s murder. Bigger realizes that a man with Britten’s prejudices would never believe a Black man could be capable of what Bigger has done. Indeed, for a time, Bigger manages to escape suspicion.

Other white characters in the novel—particularly those with a self-consciously progressive attitude toward race relations—are affected by racism in subtler and more complex ways. Though the Daltons, for instance, have made a fortune out of exploiting Black people, they aggressively present themselves as philanthropists committed to the  Black American cause. We sense that they maintain this pretense in an effort to avoid confronting their guilt, and we realize that they may even be unaware of their own deep-seated racial prejudices. Mary and Jan represent an even subtler form of racism, as they consciously seek to befriend Black people and treat them as equals, but ultimately fail to understand them as individuals. This failure has disastrous results. Mary and Jan’s simple assumption that Bigger will welcome their friendship deludes them into overlooking the possibility that he will react with suspicion and fear—a natural reaction considering that Bigger has never experienced such friendly treatment from whites. In this regard, Mary and Jan are deceived by their failure to recognize Bigger’s individuality just as much as an overt racist such as Britten is deceived by a failure to recognize Bigger’s humanity. Ultimately, Wright portrays the vicious circle of racism from the white perspective as well as from the Black one, emphasizing that even well-meaning whites exhibit prejudices that feed into the same Black behavior that confirms the racist whites’ sense of superiority.

The Hypocrisy of Justice

An important idea that emerges from Wright’s treatment of racism is the terrible inequity of the American criminal justice system of Wright’s time. Drawing inspiration from actual court cases of the 1930s—especially the 1938–39 case of Robert Nixon, a young Black man charged with murdering a white woman during a robbery—Wright portrays the American judiciary as an ineffectual pawn caught between the lurid interests of the media and the driving ambition of politicians. The outcome of Bigger’s case is decided before it ever goes to court: in the vicious cycle of racism, a Black man who kills a white woman is guilty regardless of the factual circumstances of the killing.

It is important, of course, that Bigger is indeed guilty of Mary’s murder, as well as Bessie’s. Nonetheless, the justice system still fails him, as he receives neither a fair trial nor an opportunity to defend himself. With the newspapers presenting him as a murderous animal and Buckley using the case to further his own political career, anything said in Bigger’s defense falls on deaf ears. Even Max’s impassioned defense is largely a wasted effort. The motto of the American justice system is “equal justice under law,” but Wright depicts a judiciary so undermined by racial prejudice and corruption that the concept of equality holds little meaning.

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